A Long Term Challenge

Quality update Looks like the club is heading in the right direction.

Interesting times ahead then. I assume by this update you plan to stick it out and see how this season starts?

Looking forward to seeing how the team gels. Did you manage to do most of the business before re-season friendlys had finished?

I try and bring in a few extra coaches into my team when I take over, to one make sure I have a decent coverage of all aspects. And because even at non-league level, a good size squad is important as injuries and really hamper a season and means my coaches are not over worked then.

Walter:The changes were definitely necessary if the club is not going to go straight back down to League Two. I think it is great we have attracted players like Bostock and Huertas...I just hope they do well.

milan05: I am indeed sticking with Rotherham; I really should have made that clear in the last post. The majority of the transfers had been done in time in order to give them chance to play together in my preferred formation of 4-4-2. I let the assistant manager take control of the friendlies and it was great to see him give every player some game time which will do them some good for the coming season.

Unfortunately the club is severely lacking the wage budget; we are in fact in the red by £1k so the board simply won't let me bring in more coaches which I had hoped to do. Thankfully the squad size is adequate in my opinion but set for a couple of seasons in terms of long term players. This means that future budgets can be spent on bringing in the staff that we desperately need.

Some really nice updates recently mate. I have been following this story a lot recently and I feel it has a lot of promise. I hope that it keeps going and I hope that is continues to get better

2013-09-18 19:31#135252 wellsy1498 : Some really nice updates recently mate. I have been following this story a lot recently and I feel it has a lot of promise. I hope that it keeps going and I hope that is continues to get better

Well I am glad you are still enjoying it. The updates won't be posted as often for a while but please do stick with it as it is going to keep going for a long term as I am really enjoying the game again.

This pre-season is one of the most important times of my career at Rotherham United so far. The reason for me thinking this is because I have had to bring in a load of players. I hadn’t quite planned ahead, released a lot of players and didn’t even give two thoughts who I was going to bring in to replace them.

Eventually I brought in a lot players with a number of them signing permanent deals which has helped to add a bit of security to the club, especially as the majority of the players are young lads. It was important to bring in the players before pre-season took place, which was done successfully. This provided the players the opportunity to get use to playing with each other, in my style of play and get some wins under the belt before the League One season starts for proper.

The players weren’t given the biggest challenge in terms of calibre of team with no disrespect towards the other teams intended but getting the wins was the most important thing no matter who the opponent was. The team’s performances were really good with all the players, including the new additions to the squad, contributing to the first few wins of the season.

Having not watched any of the games, not really paid much attention to the players the assistant manager chose to play; it is going to be really difficult to pick a starting eleven. I think it is always important to bring the new players in gradually and bring them on as substitutes once the regulars have won us the games...well, I hope they manage to wins us some games. I have a feeling it is going to be a difficult season despite this great pre-season.

Hopefully you'll be able to carry your pre-season form into League 1.

2013-09-21 00:22#135352 Pixel : Hopefully you'll be able to carry your pre-season form into League 1.

That is definitely the intention but it is definitely going to be a lot more difficult than last season!

The Capital One Cup is a competition that I have no interest in on Football Manager, never mind in the real world. I don’t get the purpose of it and in my opinion it doesn’t have the same sense of tradition and potential for giant killing compared to the more historic FA Cup which is rightly one of the best domestic cup competitions in the world. This is of course is going to come across as me being extremely bitter after being knocked out of the first round and not meeting the board of directors expectations of reaching the second round as a minimum. However, I couldn’t care less that we are out of the competition as the League One has to be our sole focus this season; ensuring that we retain our position in the league is vital to the future of the club.

We had had more luck against Sheffield Wednesday last season with us taking them to a replay before beating them and progressing to the next round of the FA Cup. However, Wednesday simply played us off the park and we fully deserved to lose. There are two reasons for such a poor showing; the first being that Wednesday do have a better squad than us and the second being that I probably didn’t put my all into managing the squad into the game but instead just letting it play out.

The board of directors don’t appear too bothered about us exiting the competition so early and can understand why we didn’t beat Sheffield Wednesday. The fans too haven’t expressed any discontent so to be honest we may as well have not played the match in the first place.

Thank you to everyone who has made it possible to get this story just over the 5000 read marks. I am still a long way off reaching my goal of beating the number of reads my Liverpool story gained but I am sure with this support I will manage it.

Unlucky loss, but I think the focus should be on the league. Maybe you can make a cup run in the FA Cup

2013-09-22 11:27#135514 Walter : Unlucky loss, but I think the focus should be on the league. Maybe you can make a cup run in the FA Cup

I honestly think we just played poorly and deserved the loss. Like I said in my comments, I really didn't put any effort into the match as it is just a competition that I think has no purpose to it.

Yet another mixed month! We started off well with a difficult match against Yorkshire rivals Barnsley and the defeat to Sheffield Wednesday really did knock our confidence, which meant that we slumped to two defeats. It was quite annoying that a defeat in a competition I couldn’t have cared less about dinted our confidence so much that it took a few changes in the team to get us back to winning ways. The three matches without a win did result in me bringing in another player as a result of the board of directors increasing the wage budget to a reasonable amount meant I could at least sign someone on a free transfer. I did just that by signing the former Liverpool player Connor Coady. He is another great young player who could have a very bright future at Rotherham United; he is also another lad who wouldn’t have broken into his former side’s first team so wanted game time.

A very bright spark towards the end of the month was Obika. He has been a revelation since he signed last season from Spurs and he looks at home in League One. If we are going to do well this season it is beyond vital that he and a few others remain fit for what will be a busy season. We are still struggling in terms of backroom staff with the physio department being stretched thin. In terms of coaches I have brought in Simon Davies in order to help improve the attacking side of our game.

I am slightly concerned at the number of goals we have conceded and things can sometimes be decided on goal difference and ours isn’t exactly the best. I will be looking for us to be improving the defensive side of the game as we are capable of outscoring any opponent but life would be easier if we didn’t give the opponents the chances in the first place. Hopefully Coady can go straight into the side and bring some stability at the back and form a partnership with the ever present Arnason.

Player of the Month – Jonathan Obika

To be honest I think it was a great month, with only one loss in the league, keep it up.

2013-09-22 21:15#135561 Walter : To be honest I think it was a great month, with only one loss in the league, keep it up.

Looking back it was probably not too bad a month as I had first thought. Hopefully we can get on a positive winning streak so we can climb up the table.